Mitt, Perry bet big on GOP direction

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The two leading Republican presidential candidates made very different bets Wednesday night about the GOP primary electorate — dueling wagers that will set the contours of the race going forward.

Rick Perry’s debate debut here was hot and uncompromising. He threw elbows at Republicans from Ron Paul and Karl Rove on up. Offered an opportunity to retreat from his attacks on Social Security, he promised more “provocative” language about the program. Mitt Romney, by contrast, was measured and sober. He presented himself as a competent manager who can fix the economy and beat President Barack Obama.

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Perry’s bet is on a conservative, confrontational and mad-as-hell Republican Party. Romney’s is that GOP activists want, above all, to win and will come to recognize that nominating the Texas governor would be an act of political suicide.

The divide between the two men reflects an ongoing debate that’s splitting the Republican Party both on the campaign trail and beyond it. Some of its leaders, looking back at the 2010 midterm elections, believe that the party — and the nation — are ready to gorge on red meat as never before. The American people, goes this line of thinking, recognize that entitlements must be addressed and that old-style demagoguery over the issue has become less effective.

Others believe deeply that the laws of political gravity still apply — that Social Security and Medicare reform must be handled with great care, if at all, and that 2012 will hinge on jobs-focused swing voters who are in no mood to revisit the still-popular New Deal-era program during a time of economic uncertainty. The divide is both strategic and ideological, and as Romney and Perry emerge clearly as the party’s two presidential poles on the issue, it will take on an even higher profile than it did during the punishing debate over Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.

“I think it’s naive for the political elite to think that Social Security can’t be discussed, can’t be fixed, can’t be done better in this new, modern era,” said Dave Carney, Perry’s chief strategist, after the POLITICO/NBC debate. “That’s crazy.”

What’s crazy, say gleefully incredulous Romney aides, is nominating a GOP candidate who thinks that “by any measure Social Security is a failure.”

“The Republican Party has to defend the position of the nominee,” said top Romney adviser Stuart Stevens. “Every House candidate that runs, every Senate candidate that runs, would have to run on the Perry plan to kill Social Security.”